David Heiller
I didn’t have the good fortune of knowing Anny Ahlbom very well. I met her one early spring afternoon in 1982, while working as a magazine and insurance salesman. She asked me right into her home six miles west of Rutledge. We drank coffee and ate apple cake. The 90-year-old lady led me through the house, showing off the paintings and carvings done by her late husband, John. She played the piano and sang and danced with me, a total stranger. She gave me a pair of mittens which she had knit, and a set of woolen wrist bands, then took my mittens with a promise to knit the hole in one of the thumbs.
I didn’t have a chance to sell her anything, and by the time I left two hours later, I didn’t want to.
When you enter Anny’s old house, the work of John Ahlbom overpowers you. Practically everything is hand done, starting with the rock exterior walls. Walls inside are painted floor to ceiling with murals of forests, horses, lakes. Figurines of men and animals, carved out of wood, stand in every corner. The stone fireplace, the 10-foot plastered archway that looks like marble with its colored mortar, the curved, wooden cupboards on the corner, are all the work of an artist, John Ahlbom.
Indeed, John deserves a story in himself. His works are scattered everywhere in Pine County. From the painting of Dr. William Ehmke at the Willow River High School library, to the life-size painting of Jesus Christ at United Methodist Church in Finlayson, from the brick fireplace at the American Legion Hall in Askov to the fireplace at Cassidy’s Restaurant in Hinckley.
But while John left physical tributes to behold, Anny left something equally valuable—a special personality that was partly from the Old Country and mostly from Anny herself.
She and John came from Sweden in 1914, and were married in Pine City that year. “I didn’t understand a thing the justice of the peace was saying,” Anny had said about the ceremony. In fact, the story has it that John coached Anny on the words “I do” over and over. When the time finally came, he told her, “Say yah, say yah!” They had to borrow $2.50 for the license. For their honeymoon, they took a rowboat trip on the Snake River in Pine City.
They moved around for several years, living for a time at the corner where Dwight Dietz now lives. At first, they stayed in a tent insulated with hay. John and Anny would take the bowl of bread dough to bed with them, so that it would rise during the night for the next day’s food. It was at that site about 1916 that the baby twins of John’s brother died. They are buried on the birch knoll to the east of the Dietz farm.
After several moves, John and Anny settled to stay six miles west of Rutledge. There, John built his “Kingdom of the Woods,” as some people called it. They raised five children: Claude, Roy, Alice, Astrid, and Johnny. Claude died when he was 17, in 1933. A frozen pile of sawdust that he was tunneling into collapsed. John, coming home from work, discovered his dead son when he saw the feet sticking out of the pile. Alice died in 1960.
Anny was a vital part of life in the area. She gave birth to all her children at home except the youngest, Johnny, in 1933. He was a breech baby, so they called for Dr. Ehmke and met him in a November blizzard in Rutledge. Anny brought many other children into the world too. She served as midwife for the Romanowski family next door, helping with the births of Agnes, Paul, Bernice, Mary, Marsella, Edwin, and John. Ed now farms that place, and his two sons, Randy and Ronnie, called Anny “Grandma.” She called them her grandsons.
Army’s kindness extended to others. She would make soup during the depression and take it across the road at noon time to the country school, Rhine Lake District 51. She and John also boarded teachers for the school for more than 20 years.
Anny and John also danced well. They won numerous mazurka and waltz contests in the area. Anny told me once, “Men used to whisper in my ear, ‘I love to dance with you.’” I could imagine it.
They loved each other, and weren’t afraid to tell others. John used to talk of the time Anny wanted to go to an auction sale, yet wanted a big supper that evening. So she fixed a chicken and put it in the oven. She carried a bowl of bread dough with her to the auction, and held it in her arms to rise while she watched the sale. When she returned home, the chicken was done, and the bread was ready for the oven.
“You can appreciate a woman like that,” John had said of Anny.
Anny and John also played jokes on one another. One time, Anny told John that the Romanowskis needed help moving a big bed. John went over, and they didn’t know what he was talking about. He came back, and called out “Anny” in such a voice that made Anny smile and hide. She was in a bedroom, scrubbing the floor, so crawled under the bed. John spied her feet protruding, dragged her out, then dunked her head in the bucket of scrub water.
Anny’s greatest loves were gardens and flowers. She would never throw a flower bulb away. In the winter, 200 plants would sit in the house. Son-in-law Basil Serfin remembers the time the flowers needed watering, and Anny ordered him out with the sprinkling can, even though it was raining. She raised gardens big enough for 12 people.
She also worked with her hands. Rug making was her specialty. Her rug loom is now on display at the Pine County Historical Museum in Askov. She would also demonstrate weaving on another loom at the museum.
There’s much more one could say about “Anny-in-the-woods,” as she signed her letters. I think her health was the most remarkable, and a reflection of the wholesome life she led. Anny didn’t even have a doctor. She’d had surgery in 1966, then saw a doctor for a yearly checkup after that. Finally she quit even those once-a-year visits.
Anny’s daughter, Astrid, and her husband, Basil, moved in with Anny two years ago. Astrid took over the cooking, and Anny began spending more time in the lawn chair than in the garden. She became weaker and weaker over the past six months, and began losing weight.
Astrid and Basil took Anny to Mercy Hospital on Thursday, June 6. Anny didn’t want any drugs, or intravenous feeding. No intervention.
“They said ‘It looks like she wants to go, and let’s not hinder it.’ A wonderful way to go,” Basil said. “The body just quit,” her son Roy said.
At 8:30 Monday morning, June 10, Astrid and Basil watched Anny die.
“She just went to sleep. Very painless,” Basil said. “She accepted everybody as they were, strangers and friends alike,” Astrid said.
“And in the end, showed us how to die,” Basil added.
Even in death, the joy of Anny’s life came forth. Anny used to tease that if she raised one finger while she lay in the coffin, that meant she wanted a peanut butter sandwich.
“And we had peanut butter and bread ready,” Basil joked.
She also asked Myrtle Romanowski to place a rose in her hands, to cover up the gnarls of 93 years of life. That wish was granted—Mrs. Romanowski placed the flower there.
I have a feeling that rose is still growing and alive, and that Anny is, too.
